On Jan. 26-27, SIS winter sports athletes traveled to different schools to compete in the KAIAC Championships. Both the swim team and varsity girl’s basketball team traveled to YISS, while SIS hosted the boys basketball championship.
For this year’s championship, the swim team was heavily underhanded, especially due to several absences. The team still had a strong performance with the boys team winning fourth and girls team securing seventh.
“While injuries and absences held us back, I think our team performed great,” Sarah Kim (10), varsity girls swim team junior captain, said. “The boys team missed out on some key swimmers but they still managed to compete with other schools, and I’m very proud of our girls team for fighting through the championship despite having only four members.”
The girls basketball team was also very successful, securing third place out of seven total teams. Through the tournament, the girls beat YISS, but lost to DMHS. In the end, however, they beat OMHS.
The boys basketball team had the greatest performance, emerging first in the championship. They beat DMHS, then CI, and finally GSIS to finish the tournament with three wins and zero losses.
Many SIS athletes were awarded in the tournaments: For swimming, Jane Park (12) and Luke Seo (9) won both All Tournament and All KAIAC awards; Daniel Shin (12), Evan Kim (9), Luke Lee (9), Mathew park (9) and Sarah Kim (10) won the KAIAC.
The basketball teams also saw success with Joseph Park (12) winning tournament MVP, all-KAIAC, and all-conference. Julie Koh (10), Anika Kurebayashi (12), Aaron Kim (12), and Edward Sohn (11) won all-conference positions. Finally, Koh won top-gun, an award given to the best shooter over the tournament.
“I’m so happy to win the championship,” Joseph Park (12), MVP of the tournament, said. “We struggled a little throughout regular season games, especially GSIS, our finals matchup. That combined with this championship being one of the last times I play varsity basketball made this experience much more valuable.”
With the championship over, winter athletes only have AISA left until the end of their season.